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Raymond's Game 2 (One-offs)
A group of mercs hired in King Hubreck's name (plus one hanger-on) hiked through the mountains and destroyed a giantish device. Status *DM: Raymond *Players:BD1 **Bryce - Igor, Prince of the Highlands - Neanderthal Cleric **Ryan - Alfador - Elven Magus **Paul - Dr. Splencifio "Splinter" Bogwade - Ratfolk Alchemist **Shelley - Meridian - Wilden Ranger *Date: May 14 & 17, 2012 *Location: Ryan's Media Room Set-Up I'm planning this one-off as a test run of the Pathfinder (D&D 3.75) rule set. This mini will take place in the Lendraca setting. It is the setting that I plan to use if I DM the next campaign. Setting The party has been contracted by King Hubreck to aid the coalition Human-Dwarf military in mountains the dwarves call "Draca". The coalition military has been engaged in rousting the frost giant population from the area for the last year and a half. The war against the frost giants began as a result of a sudden increase in giant attacks in and incursions into both human and dwarven territories. The human and dwarven kingdoms decided to join forces as the attacks from the giants grew more intense. Just prior to the session the party will have beenRK1 hired in service of the human king and been given 5000gp in advance pay (already figured into your starting wealth) with the promise of greater reward on completion of your mission. The session will begin with the party approaching a base camp of the coalition military to meet with a dwarven captain for further details of your mission. Mechanics Currently planning this to be a level 8 session. This should give you an idea of how characters in 3E work without over burdening you with having to learn too much about the characters and the system. Though I prefer rolling for Ability scores and HP gains, for simplicity's sake characters should be generated using this point buy using High Fantasy totals (20 points). Further HP gains will be average die roll. Use this utility if you are not up for doing the math. In a proper campaign these would be actual die rolls but this system should make it easier to pregenerate a character. I've rolled a sample character that meets the criteria for this session Your characters will have a starting total wealth of 23,500 gp each.BD2 Session Review The Conjoining Splinter and Alfador met with Meridian in King Hubreck's court where they receive the first half of their payment and stock up on supplies for their quest. They set out and find Igor tripping balls in the wilderness and they invite him along on their dangerous mission. The Bewitching Beard The party makes it to the last known Coalition outpost before their goal, and meet with the mighty dwarf in charge, Commander Magnon Ironglaive. He shows them a weathered but finely crafted map of the area, and explains what little information he has on the giants recent actions and whereabouts. He provides them with some essentials and the party sets out again the next morning. The Indiscriminate Eagle After a few days journey they overhear an argument in the woods, and through careful listening and bird reconaissance determine that a few large humanoids speaking giant are holding some smaller humanoids captive and have already eaten some. The party assumes they are frost giants, and Splinter disguises himself as a frost giant child, hoping to distract them enough to give the rest of the party a significant advantage to incapacitate the captors and free the captives. However, the enemies are in fact trolls unsympathetic to a lost giant child, and fighting breaks out immediately. Despite the failed ruse, the adventurers quickly dispatch the trolls. BD3 Fruitless Interrogations A lost uldra emerges from a tree stump during the scuffle, and she begins to flee. After the trolls are killed the party chases after and captures her. She has no memory of how she got here, and is wearing a magical collar of domination. Alfador dispels its magic, and after a few more questions, the party allows her to leave. During her interrogation, a dwarf, Boris Nickletooth, frees the captives, believing the party with Splinter, still disguised as a frost giant, to be enemies. Igor spots him among the trees and captures him. He attempts to take his own life, but is resuscitated. After Splinter's disguise wears off and the dwarf wakes back up, they question him about his mission and let him go as he seems to know nothing more than they have already gathered. He does however identify the domination collar as possibly an Underdark design. The party sleeps at the troll camp, and heads out the next morning. BD4 An Annoying Gnome The party comes to a long and rickety rope bridge. At the start of the bridge is a friendly svirfneblin, offering safe passage for a fee. The bridge is strangely non-magical, and the gnome appears to be real and organic, despite the fact that he seems unable to communicate more than his offer, but in the native language of whomever he speaks too, including Bear the fox and Alfador's long dead language. Without paying his fee, travelers will eventually fall through the bridge, even if they are being carried by someone who has payed. The party has enough money to pay for 3 passages, and Splinter shrinks himself down to be carried across by Ska the eagle. Igor preforms a quick vivisection of the mysterious gnome after crossing the bridge with him. He bleeds out but does not change expression, and Igor tosses him into the chasm.BD5 The Lost Shepherds The adventurers find some shepherds and their flock of rams on their path. They are sasquatchesRK2, apparently being dominated by the through blue runes inscribed all over their flesh. They attack despite their pleading faces. They too are quickly defeated and restrained. The party investigates their home, and find many more sasquatches in a nearby cave with the same runes and brains oozing out from their ears. The party returns to the captives, and determine that the most merciful course of action is to kill them. BD6 Intermission Yeti Ambush Stopping for the night, Alfador takes the first watch as the rest of the party settles in around the campfire and falls asleep. However he is completely distracted by some shiny bugs, and a group of yetis and frost wolves surround the camp. They were powerful enemies, hardened by the cruel tundra, but perhaps due to being only half awake, Splinter is unshaken by the frightening foes and is able to lob several powerful bombs from his sleeping bag. After a few moments, the intruders were sufficiently shot, sliced and burnt, and the adventurers went back to sleep.BD7 Into the Glacier They finally arrive at the frost giant settlement near Drec Bayg. Boris distracts a group of giants out of a glacial cave, and the group decides it is the most likely place to find the secret weapon. As they enter, they see a young adult giant and another frost wolf. The two are bound after a short scuffle. The giant explains that his mother has been working on the weapon in the cave, but little else of importance. They party investigates the mother's work area and a sleeping monstrosity either in league or enslaved by her. They decide not to prod it.BD8 Blizzle Battle At the back of the cave was a blizzard elemental in stasis, surrounded by unconscious runed sasquatch children. The party determined that the children were somehow empowering the elemental and tried to remove them, awakening the elemental. The children, like their parents, were not in control of their actions, but merely explosive vessels, and they were dealt with in a similar fashion as they were removed from their locations around the elemental, weakening it, and allowing the party to destroy what was most likely the secret weapon they'd been seeking.BD9 An Ungrateful Prisoner They destroyed the runed dais that it had been resting on and discovered a small cavern beneath. There was a female drow in a cage who insulted them in her language. Splinter spoke to her in Undercommon, but she was angry and uncooperative. Assuming that she was aiding the giants, albeit against her will, and given the fact that she would sooner die than accept the party's help in escaping, Igor unleashed his amphibious army upon her frail body.BD11 Denouement They next destroyed the workshop and reagents. The young giant was unrepentant and petulant when confronted with the abominable crimes of his people, and was slain along with his loyal companion. The party sneaked out of the cave, but was seen leaving the settlement, and they marched as fast as possible back to the Ironglaive's camp, pushing the limits of their exhaustion. After recovering at the camp, they continued on to the King's castle, where they were compensated and thanked by a royal assistant.BD12 Commentary * RK1 **Yay! I used my favorite grammatical tense. * RK2 **Sasquatches or Sa-le-squatch. I wasted 90 minutes looking up this useless information! I'm not going to let it that time be spent COMPLETELY pointlessly! * BD1 **This group composition was not as great as it could have been. We had 3 dps and 1 guy optimized for healing. From this session Ive learned that basically every character should be rolled for max damage, trying to build for healing or tanking leads to an ineffective character in combat. I strongly dislike this aspect of 3E. I want my character to do something distinct from the others in combat, besides just the flavor of his damage. I know Igor had a lot of spells to cast, but a real situation in which to use them never came up in combat. Ray, I know you are reading this thinking "but most of the game takes place OUTSIDE of combat!" and I'll get to that later. In summary, I like for combat roles to exist, I enjoy protecting and healing my allies while they fight. Everybody just rolling to see who can do the most damage is not as fun for me. * BD2 **WOW, well rolling these characters was a real challenge for me. I don't know if it was just my familiarity with 4e, or just the inherent complexness of pathfinder rules, but I spent a long time on this. Maybe if we had started from level 1 and built up it would have eliminated a lot of this confusion. I like the multiclassing in 3e more than I do in 4th. The feats felt similar to me, besides the noticeable lack of any healing boosting feats.(I think this is due to healing being discouraged in 3e). The Metamagic ones were interesting, but not really useful at our level. The fact that all spellcasters choose from the same list of spells irked me a bit, I want my classes to be different, Damn it! I also liked that the "other" stats have a purpose, in 4e you can stick an 8 in something and not really notice to bad if its not your main stat. In 3e, they seem to make more of a difference. I know I felt limited by my 8 intel when picking my skill points. Speaking of which, I feel like there are way to many skills. the list in 4e covers all the same scenarios at a fraction of the skills. I like having REF/FORT/WILL being a defense more than a save. It doesn't really make any difference game wise, just easier for the players and DM to keep up with. Also I miss my healing surges, I think they add an interesting element of strategy to the game. **Money: I have no idea if this was a proper amount to give us or not. I, for one, was completely overwhelmed by the amount of choices for items. I spent most of mine on a healy thing, a huge waste as it turned out(again, healing in combat is discouraged so badly that buying things like this are not worth it). I know paul wasted money on a crossbow. I think it would have been better to just give us items, or at least let us pick from some list you made, so we wouldn't end up with such useless crap. * BD3 **CONS: This combat was over in 2 rounds. I know that paul got some lucky crits, and that you anticipated in being a little harder for us, but a disappointment to be sure. By the time one of my abilities finished casting, the fight was over(Another reason why combat casting doesn't work right in 3e). I wanted time to actually DO something, and not just stand around and wait for the other DPS guys to clean up. The sameness of the enimies not a problem, but might have been if the fight lasted longer. I think the inclusion of the witchy fey lady would have spiced things up, but she never got to act. I'm still not sure what her purpose was. **PROS: The combat was over quickly( :P ). The shortness of the fight kept it from dragging on. * BD4 **This was a bit frustrating for me. I wanted to get some info out of these strange people. We captured them and spent like an hour talking to them to get nothing. Maybe we just did really shitty on our checks? On the other side, I got to do something! Using "hold person" on the dwarf was fun and made me feel useful(even if we didn't get any info out of him). I think Raymond may have failed his will save on purpose, but whatever, still a fun little after note to our victory. * BD5 **This little bridge thing was great. It added a lot of mystery to the world, and gave it a unknown "we might just stumble upon anything out here" feeling that was really exciting. I like how this did not really have anything to do with the main goal, and was just a fun little puzzle thing. I feel like we could have found out more about it, and I would have liked to track down that info. If this was a full campaign, I think I would have abandoned our mission right there and gone to investigate the mystery bridge. really the high point of the session for me. Once again, Raymond, your best DM moments come outside of battle and on things not really important to the main goal. Also, Igor was very useful here. I had a lot of options for doing interesting things. Spell casters are super useful in non-combat situations. I just wish that every class was useful in all situations. * BD6 **We had a mix of enemies in this fight, which was more interesting. Once again, we dispatched them quickly. But it was OK this time. I felt like we should have been able to kill those guys without any problems. Talking to the rams was fun. The huge cliff added an interesting element to the fight. I wanted to save these guys. I feel like everytime we tried to so something after the combat was over we just wasted time, were we really that bad at checks!? **PROS: Mix of enemies, talking to sheep, interesting terrain. **CONS: no range guys. Again, this was fine for now, but range guys can really make a combat more interesting, and I would like to see the inclusion of some in future sessions. * BD7 **Again, this fight went really fast. I only had one turn in it. I got off a big area heal, then nothing did not get to do anything else. This was the most fun fight for me in the entire session, I think it was because I got to do what I wanted to do, namely, heal people. The image of splinter crawling away in his bag was also interesting. * BD8 **I was a little confused by the presence of the worm thing. It seemed like an interesting enemy/ally. I didn't feel like we were particularly quite, he might have woken up? Again, maybe we blew our checks on him badly. Meta-wise, I felt like he was there to help us fight the blizzard. * BD9 **This fight was more boring than it should have been for me. It's possible that I was just getting really sleepy. I felt like we spent the entire time trying to get in range of the blizzard. Movement usually makes combat more exciting, but not if its frustrating. I spent the time thinking a ice slide would have added a lot of excitement to this combat. Some sort of chute that the players could slide down to get more speed, but have to make a check or crash at the end. The bossman was kind of puny after all that. Removing the children added something different to the fight, but I felt like there was more potential here. * BD11 **Once again, our post battle interrogations were unfruitful. I'm not sure why this drow was included. Maybe some of this was lead up to your planned full campaign, but for the purposes of this mini, this got to be very frustrating for me, leading to my murderous state. * BD12 **The conclusion here was more than was necessary for me to feel satisfied. I was ready to be done and we had to walk all the way back the camp and talk to a bunch of people. Maybe I was just really sleepy. *'BD SUMMARY' **Combat felt too quick, I didnt get to use many of my spells **Roles are not clearly defined in 3e, I dont like this **The wand turned out to be ok, I still dont like it I would have liked to have to use my spells to heal the guys instead. I never felt in danger of running out of heals **Fruitless interrogations and mercy killings were tiring, I would have liked more to come of this **Bridge and Gnome were great, non-combat remains your strong suit. I hope to see more of this stuff in the future, play to your strengths! *'Paul says:' Warning: my art classes have made me a harsh critic! I think it's insulting to just snow job someone who put a lot of work into something just because you don't want a confrontation. The responsible thing to do is offer constructive criticism so they can improve! (Might go without saying, but consider yourself disclaimed). As always, thank you very much for taking the helm and putting together two fun nights. **Story ***I gather you put a lot of work into world creation here, but I don't feel like the mini benefited from it much. Gleaning details apart from what we could see for ourselves failed, and not for lack of trying on our part. I'm not asking for all the secrets to be given to us on a silver platter, but I needed more world to sink my teeth into. There were some interesting NPCs and enemies sure, (the nymph lady, Boris, the gnome, the brat, the ohm) but apart from physical description, we learned almost nothing else about them, so I never felt like we were getting much narrative traction. If this mini was meant to be a sort of prologue to a larger campaign, my curiosity was not piqued. I know you have to leave stuff out to have a mystery, but for me, you didn't reach critical mass for curious details. ***I appreciated the attention to detail for the different languages. You should try more accents next time! ***Killing innocent people is not fun. Occasionally, when it's the still the best thing to do, that kind of tragedy is compelling. We killed innocent people more than occasionally, it felt more like half the time. It was too much, and just became unpleasant. **Combat ***I have to admit that it was fun being top dps for once. However, we melted through these guys, even after the second night adjustment, and I was never worried about making it through a fight. ***Working with positioning to avoid the frost breath, and knocking the kids over while chasing the blizzle around was a nice bit of complexity, some environmental interaction would have been fun though. ***Pictures are always welcome! Thanks for finding these for us. ***The mix of enemies types was great, but their attacks seemed to only be simple melee and frost AoE (not that our own characters had much more variety). **Pathfinder in general ***My opinion hasn't changed much since I spoke with you and Ryan about it after the first night: the complexity does not compensate the entertainment in most cases. For this reason, Pathfinder is also more realistic in most cases, but that doesn't make it better IMHO. Healing surges are an important and smart mechanic. Critical strikes are less exciting. Rolling for a defense save is not nearly as fun as rolling for an attack, and I'd rather just have the static defense score. Attacking someone's ability scores is certainly realistic, but seems like too much of a hassle compared to a simplified condition like -2 to X-type rolls. I never had to deal with the CMB or CMD to know if I like it or not, but I'm all for a good system in place if I want to trip, disarm, or restrain someone midcombat. I didn't really understand the hierarchy of actions per turn, but it seemed reasonable. Dealing with regenerating body parts is a pretty crucial mechanic I think. Some of it is of course having experienced one before the other; moving 4 squares when I used to move 6 is fucking annoying. ***Character creation took way too long. I think most of that is the fault of the website's poor organization compared to the professionally made books (understandable, of course). All the extra skills again get points for realism, and while they were a bit frustrating, they'd probably grow on me. It's nice to have a linguistics skill (it was a bit too easy to learn all most of my available languages though). I purposefully secluded myself from the full library of items, and was pretty happy with the a la carte style enchantments, although it took a while to understand the actual cost of things. I did not feel like Pathfinder had a larger or more varied pool of classes. It does have a bigger selection of predefined races, but I feel like a good 4e DM can convert most monsters into a PC. *'Ryan's Notes:' **We've already talked about most if not all of this personally, but for posterity's sake: **More than once (in the encounters with the gnome, rhemoraz, and anything with blue runes on) I felt as though there was a solution that I wasn't seeing. Was there actually a way to save those kids? Could we have bargained with the rhemoraz? Was there a simpler way of deactivating the elemental battery? Could we have avoided paying the gnome altogether? **I feel like this is what Knowledge checks are for: if such solutions exist, a successful check should give you a clue, or if there is no solution, the check should tell you that (rather than be ambiguous.) **Combat could've used some more variation. Most of it was "run up and hit these guys," and even the more threatening enemies (the wolves) felt like glass cannons: their breath dealt big damage, but one good swipe from my flaming scythe and they go down. Adding some more ranged attackers and spellcasters would have gone a long way towards mixing it up and perhaps making the party feel threatened. **I don't hold the ease of combat against you; figuring out what constitutes an appropriate challenge for a particular party is a process that doesn't usually happen in one night, and I think it's better to err on the easy side rather than facing a TPK (for the wrong reasons) and either having badly disgruntled players or having to bail them out with a deus ex machina. **I appreciate the world-building, whether it came up or not. You might've tried adding a couple more references to it though - have the giants take Lemaign's name in vain, or note that the drow woman has a tattoo of Hense's holy symbol. Shoehorning them in everywhere would've felt like trying too hard, but there should have been more everyday details that a person living in this world might casually notice. *DM Notes: **I don't know why, but for some reason when I was actually there, I felt very unprepared for the first night. The second night I felt much more prepared even though I didn't actually do that much extra planning in-between the sessions. I think it may have been that I learned a little about your party from the first so even for the things I didn't explicitly plan ideas had a chance to stew in the back of my mind. **I severely underestimated your groups power level for the first session. I think Paul's triple bombs threw me off the most. I knew he had bombs; 4d6 acted like 6d6 against most of the enemies, but I think I had figured only one of those a round--not three. **The uldra was my attempt to spice up the troll fight. She was a caster. But after all the trolls were gone so was any mind control effect. **I did have more information that Boris could have given out. But your frost giant disguise was too good. So his ability to give information was severely compromised. Though even if you had been able to get info out of him there was a limit to what info he could give you. The army guys were being honest when they said they didn't know much about the weapon. They wouldn't give you much information about how they got what intel they did have because they were sending you deep into enemy territory. If you had been captured they didn't want you to have information that could compromise their military. **I really enjoyed the bridge. The way you solved the problem was one I had not considered. I didn't have a definitive way of solving the problem. The bridge does have some lore to solve but it really wasn't available in this session. **For the final encounters I did have a battlefield effect planned that I just completely forgot about when you got there. Area damage attacks were supposed to cause stalactite-like icicles to fall and potentially hit the party. **If you had done better on the second linguistics check with the drow you could have had more lore that way too. **As this was my first time DMing a 3E game I learned a little bit about how to go about that. If I could go back I'd certainly have given EVERYTHING more HP. I also would have insisted that there be more sasquatch kids in the Blizzy chamber. **As for judgements on the system: ***Bryce, there's not much I can do about the less defined combat rolls ***Paul, the length of time that character creation took I think had a lot to do with the level I was asking you to create, and the fact that you are new to this system. I know that all else being equal that 3E probably does take a little longer. But I know I can knock out a level 8 character fairly quickly (especially if it is a single class character). If you go into the 3.0 and 3.5 materials there is A LOT of content for Pathfinder. But the content on the website IS a little limited. For any further Pathfinder stuff, basically my ruling is use Official Pathfinder stuff first, 3rd Party Pathfinder stuff second, prior 3E stuff third, and if what you want isn't available in those sources then go straight up Custom Content. That ranking places the least amount of work on the DM (older 3E stuff may need to go through some conversion to work with Pathfinder). ***Everyone, I know that combat in 3E is much faster that in 4E. But I don't think it will always be as short as it was in this session. Much of that was likely a result of the combination of my lack of familiarity with your party and my status as a novice DM. I know that Ryan is planning a Pathfinder session so maybe things will go a little smoother there. Loot *From Commander Magnon Ironglaive: **4x Oil of Flaming Weapon (CL: 5) **1x Flask of Explosive Oil (CL: 6) **1.5 Weeks worth of Hardtack *Upon return to King Hubreck **10,000 gp (or equivalent personal request) each.